the politics of authenticity in popular music. the case of the blues - ray pratt

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The politics of authenticity in popular music: The caseof the bluesRay Pratt aa Associate professor of Political Science , Montana State University , Bozeman, MTPublished online: 24 Jul 2008.

To cite this article: Ray Pratt (1986) The politics of authenticity in popular music: The case of the blues, Popular Music andSociety, 10:3, 55-78, DOI: 10.1080/03007768608591250

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The Politics of Authenticity in Popular Music:The Case of the Blues

Ray Pratt

Why has the Blues exerted such an appeal for a generation ofyoung white listeners? This paper suggests that the explanation liesin the power of the blues as a music of individual authenticity andthat it fulfilled similar functions initially for the black audience asit has, increasingly, for whites.

I"The blues is America's national song form." That has been

said many times over the last 30 years.1 But why this should be so,given that the blues on the surface seems to be culturally the "blackest"of black music (the "deeper" the blues, the blacker the cultural originsof the music), continues to amaze and fascinate critics and scholars.To recognize the significance and centrality of the blues in Americanpopular music is to recognize as well its importance to whites andbecause of whites, especially a generation of white Americans seeking"authenticity" in a society in many ways organized to frustrate anddeny it.

While the roots and origins of the blues lie in the dim past ofblack culture, it comes to us through generations of white mediators.The first so-called "blues" recordings were done by whites, manyof them specialists in Negro dialect material. It was nearly a decadeafter the first blues "craze" in 1914-15 that practicing black bluesmenbegan to be recorded, after several black women were allowed to recordvaudeville versions of the blues first. But it all happened becausewhites decided to do it. Indeed, some suggest that much of whatwe know as blues began as a stereotype of blacks created by whites.2But, as with so much in black culture, the forms and stereotypes"initiated and fostered by whites" were transcended by black artists."It took well over a decade to adapt the white stereotype, work itthrough, master it and turn it into a Black identity."3

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56 Popular Music and Society

Whites recorded the music and sold it to blacks, and other whiteswrote about it and continue to write about it. Over the last 30 years,the maintenance of interest in the music has become increasinglya product of white mediation, until today whites provide the majoraudience for black blues performers, owning the companies that recordthe music, (including the newer specialty record labels), representingthe artists, making up the audience, buying the records, andcontinuing to make up almost wholly the coterie of critics and scholarswho write about the blues. With the notable exceptions of AlbertMurray and LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka) practically all major booksabout blues and jazz have been by whites. The blues, like most music,fulfills important social and political functions. But today these arefor a certain segment of educated white society. Why should thisbe the case? What are the blues saying and what do whites hear inthe blues?

As Günther Schuller points out in Early Jazz, "it must beremembered that the blues was not an 'art music' It had very littleto do with mere chords and melodies; it was an essential mode ofexpression, through which a minority could render its suffering."4

The mental, emotional and psychological aspects of "having theblues" have long been part of western culture before a specific musicalform carrying the name developed. As Paul Oliver points out in TheStory of the Blues, literary references go back several hundred years.5For Albert Murray in Stomping the Blues,6 blues is a state of mind.The music is a way of responding to it. For Robert Palmer in DeepBlues,7 the blues is a "field of feeling." Paul Garon in Blues andthe Poetic Spirit1 sees blues as "poetic revolt." Ben Sidran in BlackTalk9 sees the music as a form of communication, "a galvanizationof meaning and pitch." All these are ways of hearing what the bluesis.

Hearing the political significance of blues (and jazz) posessignificant difficulties for any analyst because performers express whatthey want to say best through musical performance. The task of thecritic, and of the theoretical imagination generally, is to make explicitthe inexplicit, to reveal tacit and even unconscious dimensions ofthe music. To the uninitiated these dimensions may be difficult todiscern. As Paul Oliver pointed out many years ago,

"For those who have the blues, for those who live the blues, for those who live withthe blues, the blues has meaning. But for those who live outside the blues the meaningof the blues is elusive. For the blues is more than a form of folk song, and though itsmeaning becomes clearer with an understanding of the content of the verses, the reasonswhy the Negro sings the blues and listens to the blues is still not wholly explained. But

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The Politics of Authenticity in Popular Music 57

though the blues may frequently be associated with a state of depression, of lethargy ordespair, it is not solely a physical or a mental state. It is not solely the endurance ofsuffering or a declaration of hopelessness; nor is it solely a means of ridding oneself ofa mood. It is all of these and it is more: it is a part of the Negro's being, living withhim and within him.10

Regarding jazz, as veteran white saxophonist Bud Freeman putit,

"Oddly enough jazz is a music that came out of the black man's oppression, yet it allowsfor great freedom of expression, perhaps more than any other art form. The jazz manis expressing freedom in every note he plays. We can only please the audience doingwhat we do. We have to please ourselves first.. .1 wouldn't work for anybody. I'm workingforme..."11

In the blues, as Paul Oliver suggested in Blues Fell This Morning,"it is not that the singers are racial spokesmen,... it is simply thatin singing for himself the blues artist sings for...his unknownlisteners."12

The tremendous opportunities for individual expression throughimprovisation on, and within, the forms of the blues and jazz standardsrequire the highest level of technical proficiency (often exceedingthe finest "straight" or classical artists) and provide continuous andendless possibilities for renewed creativity and emotional catharsis.There are important political implications concerning this fact.

IITo appreciate the political dimensions of musical experience one

must transcend traditional institutionally-based conceptions ofpolitics (voting, running for office, influencing the behavior ofofficials, proposing legislation, etc.). The political act, in the senseI am using it, involves the personality and its struggles to develop.This is especially the case for creative artists, who create accordingto inner feelings, and whose work is an expression and objectificationof aspects of the self.

The Personal and the PoliticalIn recent years the women's movement has brought heretofore

"personal" crises and issues into consideration as being publiclyrelevant. Even before the advent of the women's movement, the criticalsociologist, C. Wright Mills, in his The Sociological Imagination13

distinguished between personal "troubles" and social "issues" whileshowing how issues grow out of troubles: through communicationwith others, the common sharing of certain categories of "troubles"

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becomes evident and their apparently "unique" character vanishes.They are seen as common to many people, perhaps all. In this waythey are transformed into social issues and become a matter of publicpolicy. Such heretofore "personal" needs such as those for self-esteem,dignity, and self-actualization become in this way politically relevant.Music may be the way, or at least a significant way, in which anindividual may satisfy such needs.

In works by political scientists, politics is said to involve power,rule, authority and certain common "public things."14 An importantand most basic political dimension involves the self, and masteryof the self.15 The creative aesthetic experience by its very nature impliesa significant degree of self mastery. The study of music, the learningof an instrument are all dimensions of self mastery.

In a classic discussion of human freedom, The Structure ofFreedom, political scientist Christian Bay defined politics as involving"Maximum freedom of expression."16 He distinguished bothpurposive and effective dimensions of political behavior. "Purposive"behavior involves a sense of explicit intention. Musically, the formalprotest song is clearly an example.17 "Effective" political behaviordoes in fact exert an influence, whether intended or not. Music maybe both purposive and effective political behavior completely separatefrom the explicit intention of the performer, the political dimensionsmay be unconsciously expressed. Thus, for example, black spiritualsare seen by contemporary observers as having a significant politicalprotest and even revolutionary implications quite apart form thepolitical consciousness of practitioners.18

Politics, then, is about self-actualization. The activity of thecreative artist, the musician, particularly the improvisationalmusician, involves a "politics" with the self; the individual mustachieve power over the self—power to discipline the self, power tomaster one's body and instrument. More than this, it is (particularlyfor oppressed minorities), self-assertion and self-mastery in the faceof a society that would deny it to the individual. For the oppressed,music is a way of speaking. To create a unique musical "voice" or"sound" or style is to create a potential instrument of power. Tospeak musically with that instrument is to achieve a form of power(or at least give voice to powerlessness).

Finally, through building and participating in an ongoingcommunity of musicians as Howard Becker made clear in his classicwork, Outsiders, the jazz/blues artist is involved in fashioning a"space,"19 a creative "free" space in which to continue to act infreedom.20

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In sum, to talk about the political dimension of music involvesa reconceptualization and transformation of the usual ways of talkingabout what politics is. Politics in this view involves the assertionof the self and the shaping of an identity.21

Although historically the product of members of a sociallyoppressed minority, the blues has transcended its initial origins andhas been taken up by all elements in our society. One doesn't haveto be black to be blue or to "feel" the blues or, especially, to playthe blues.22

To choose to practice an art form that is not a "popular" onein a market society brings the practitioner face-to-face with the "laws"of capitalistic economics, which operate independently of the willof individuals involved in the system. To practice non-market orientedforms of creative expression as a way of life is the kind of assertionof individuality, and the sort of effort to achieve an authenticity ofbeing that brings the individual seeking self-fulfillment first intocritical self-awareness and, eventually, to the most fundamentalcritique of the status quo.

IllWays of Hearing

To paraphrase John Berger,23 the way we hear is affected bywhat we know and what we believe.

The blues must be seen in specific class, racial, cultural andgeographical contexts as what Horowitz terms "the intersection ofhistory and biography. "2i But music as history and biography becomessignificant because of what the music supplies. Max Rafael, in hisbrilliant The Demands of art pointed out that "art leads us fromthe created work to the creative process... "25 In Urban Blues, CharlesKeil suggested that "the blues, the Negro and related concepts servenaturally as projective tests; white liberals, black militants, and othersof varying pigmentation and persuasion hear in the blues, essentiallywhat they want to hear, find in the blues ethos what they expectto find."26 But this is too relative. Does the music mean only whatwe want it to? Not at all. Whatever the intent, whatever the context,whatever the unique aspects of the biography of a great musician,whether a primitive country blues singer or a sophisticated masterinstrumentalist, it is not simply the facts of biography but whatmagical transformations of given materials—songs, blues form thatleads us back to the process of creation and biography of the creativeartist.27

Ways of Seeing and Ways of HearingIn John Berger's path-breaking analysis of art, Ways of Seeing,

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the original work of art is seen as a social relation—a piece of property.If we hear the original or recorded blues and jazz performances insuch a way, what would be the effect on standards of aestheticjudgment? Is the black musician's performance worthy of our attentionsimply because it is the product of an oppressed minority groupmember? Obviously not. The work itself, the performance, calls ourattention. It was the extraordinary sounding songs, now called theblues, that black people sang which captured the imagination ofnumerous hearers in the last century and which, in 1905, thoroughlycaptivated a black vaudeville artist such as Gertrude "Ma" Rainey,who became known as the "Mother of the Blues."28

The music is carrying a message, but it is a complex messagethat involves the fashioning of a unique voice or "sound", readilyidentifiable to experienced listeners. Thus, the late saxophone genius,John Coltrane, was quoted as saying, "when I hear a man play, whenI know a man's 'sound'.. .that's him\"29 The blues and jazz idiomby its very nature, as Albert Murray points out in Stomping TheBlues, requires revolutionary innovations and syntheses "not nearlyso much (as) a matter of quest for newness for the sake of changeas of the modifications necessary in order to maintain the definitiveessentials of the idiom."30 Thus "the self-portrait" that emerges fromthe music of Jelly Roll Morton, King Oliver, Bessie Smith, LouisArmstrong, Duke Ellington, Lester Young and Charlie Parker is notprimarily a matter of.. .egotistical self-documentation but rather ofthe distinction with which they fulfilled inherited roles in thetraditional ritual of blues confrontation and purgation, and of lifeaffirmation and continuity through improvisation."31

When we hear a blues or jazz recording it is not the clarity ofreproduction that calls our attention (though it may facilitate ourdiscerning what we are hearing), it is the performance itself. In hiscritical analysis of Berger, Seeing Berger,*2 Peter Fuller draws adistinction between painting and photography that is analogous tothat between the improvisational blues/jazz performance andrecording: photography is process (this may offend somephotographers and is not to deny the unique 'eye' or vision of manygreat photographers)—it is a true medium. Can't we say the samefor blues records?

The performance is the art, much as Fuller describes the art ofpainting: "it requires a prior imaginative conception, which is notgiven,but made real, through the exercise of human activity, e.e.,transforming work upon materials, conventional and physical. A

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painting is constituted not processed... it is the material embodimentof an artist's expressive activity.. ."33

What really counts in hearing music, then, is the power of theimprovisatory performance. Recordings reveal the "incomparableenergy" (Berger's term) that the blues and jazz musician exercisesin the transformative process of reworking a standard song or theblues. The great blues and jazz recordings are memorable becausethey "reveal... the imaginative activity of an embodied human subjectwho realizes.. .expression through transforming work."34 Thistransforming activity is exercised on definite conventional materials;in this case, the different forms of the blues, standard songs, andsong forms and chord progressions. This is the artistic "medium"out of which we can identify histories of particular stylistic traditionsassociated with great instrumentalists such as guitarists T-BoneWalker and B.B. King or tenor saxophonists Coleman Hawkins andLester Young.

The audience for jazz and blues is not isomorphic with whatperformers want to play nor with what companies wish to record.Numerous conversations and interviews with musicians over the lastseven years have demonstrated that to me.35 The unique problemfor the blues and jazz artist is to find a mutually meaningful identityof interests and self-identity between personal growth and audienceappeal and between commercial demands and self-actualization. Thepredominant performers in the blues and jazz traditions have beenblack and, over the last two decades, have had to"cross over" to whiteaudiences while still maintaining their "roots" in black culture. Thisseems especially the case with blues audiences. The Chicago bluesof Muddy Waters was black urban folk music based on Mississippidelta musical forms expanded to a band and using amplifiedinstruments. The audience for it has changed significantly over thelast 30 years. As contemporary black Chicago blues singer KoKo Taylorpoints out:

"My favorite audience is any one which digs blues. This is usually a White audiencewith a few Blacks. I've worked in strictly Black clubs for many years and always hadto do .a lot of soul, rock, and pop stuff to get over—you know, Aretha Franklin andTina Turner. Let's face it, they don't want to hear the bluest Whereas white audienceswill let me do my own thing all night long, which is blues. That's why I like doingconcerts, festivals, college crowds and things.

I think it's a conforming thing with the Blacks. A lot of them deny the blues becausethey're ashamed of their past. They won't admit even if they really like blues—until they'vehad a few drinks."'6

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Of course, there still is a large, somewhat older black audiencefor the blues, as anyone who attends a B.B. King concert in anylarge city with a significant black population can see. Chicago bluessaxophonist Eddie Shaw, leader of the late Howlin' Wolf's backupband, expressed the situation somewhat differently in a November,1983 interview with me: "The blues are saying something and theWhites are picking up on it; the Blacks don't need to, they alreadyknow it—they've been there."

IVHearing The Authenticity Of The Blues

In this section I consider four important recent books on theblues and the meaning of the blues. Each writer takes a somewhatdifferent approach, yet hears a great deal in the music—each hearsa message. They hear music that is the authentic expression of theindividuality of a socially repressed minority who found a voice, away of speaking through music, that has enriched us all. This wayof speaking involves the element of authenticity. The blues is a musicof authenticity.

In the broadest sense, authenticity involves the full developmentand expression of individuality.37 The search for authenticity, theovercoming of alienation, is virtually synonymous with modernexistence. Lionel Trilling in Sincerity and Authenticity seesauthenticity in terms of autonomy and self-definition: "the artist seekshis personal authenticity in his entire autonomousness—his goal isto be as self-defining as the art-object he creates." A work of art,in his view, "is itself authentic by reason of its entire self-definition:it is understood to exist wholly by the laws of its own being, whichinclude the right to embody painful, ignoble, or socially unacceptablesubject matters... the authentic work of art instructs us in ourauthenticity and adjures us to overcome it."38

For Marshall Berman in The Politics of Authenticity, authenticityinvolves an intensely personal politics "seeking an ideal communityin which individuality will not be subsumed and sacrificed, but fullydeveloped and expressed."39 The creation of what I have alreadyreferred to as "free space" is one significant aspect of this search.The music is built on improvisational free space and that is animportant part of its appeal. In addition, the kind of shared subcultureof essentially oppositional character among musicians as "outsiders"is an essential resource, providing opportunities to generate enclaveson which the autonomy essential to authenticity depends.

1. Ben Sidran's Black TalkBen Sidran's Black Talk,i0 conceives blues as manifestation of

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an "oral" subculture opposing the "literary" modes of thinkingcharacteristic of white American society.41 As "modes of perceptualorientation", oral and literate culture have radically different viewsof what constitutes ""practically useful information." Thus, oralcultures employ only the spoken work and its oral derivatives(including musical representations of basic vocal styles). As Sidranputs it: "to paraphrase McLuhan, the message is the medium." Theoral tradition encourages a greater degree of emotional, and perhapseven physical, involvement in the environment, which in turn allowsfor a more developed sense of community as well as a heightenedcollective awareness and even "collective unconsciousness."42

The advantages of the oral mode are manifest in the "abilityto carry out spontaneous, often improvised acts of a group nature."In this cultural mode music is one of the most legitimate outletsfor blacks—indeed, in some periods it has constituted virtually theonly outlet. It is this concept of music as a larger cultural expressionthat makes it so powerful. The vocalized tone and rhythmic approach"allow for communication of a nonverbal nature, often at anunconscious level." This African and black cultural tradition thusconstitutes a negation of the entire European tradition rooted in apattern of structure and regularity.43

In another context, Ernest Borneman has conceptualized thisphenomenon in technical terms, as follows: "While the wholeEuropean tradition strives for regularity—of pitch, of time, of timbreand of vibration—the African tradition strives for precisely thenegation of these elements. In language, the African tradition aimsat circumlocution rather than at exact definition. The direct statementis considered crude and unimaginative; the veiling of all contentsin ever-changing paraphrases is considered the criterion of intelligenceand personality." In music, Borneman points out, the same tendencytowards obliquity and ellipsis is noticeable: "no note is attackedstraight; the voice or instrument always approaches it from aboveor below, plays around the implied pitch without ever remainingon it for any length of time, and departs from it without ever havingcommitted itself to a single meaning. The timbre is veiled andparaphrased by constantly changing vibrato, tremolo, and overtoneeffects. The timing and accentuation finally, are not stated, but impliedor suggested."'44

In oral culture music is created by the group as a whole andthe individual is integrated into the society at such a basic level ofexperience that individuality in fact "flourishes in a group context."Rhythm plays a major role in this process; it not only creates and

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resolves tension but conveys information. Whereas the literate culturestores information through writing, oral culture stores it throughphysical assimilation, thus itself constituting a matrix of information.Within the music, therefore, the subject-object dichotomy is eventuallytranscended so that performer and listener enter into the same process.In Sidran's words, "The idea and act are one: the process ofcommunication is in fact the process of community."*5 Within theblues, according to Sidran, we especially see "the semantic value ofintonation contouring." Hence the "blue" notes, the melisma or vocalsmears—the cries and moans of field hollers and gospel songs and,later, the unique sound of the great saxophonists—all carry a"monverbal kind of information." There is a certain "galvanizationof meaning and pitch into a single vocalization" which is musicallyexpressed through the unique "voice" of each instrument or vocalistculminating in an individualized "sound."

This quality of blues, moreover, is inseparable from a specificcontext. As Sidran describes it, "the message carried by this vocalizedapproach was perhaps initially one of resignation. Although theremust have been a longing for escape and freedom, as well as resistanceand revenge... this communication through intonation operated atan emotional level, more basic than that of verbal interchange. Theuse of cries and melismatic approach was also a means of bringingout the individualism in an otherwise destroyed personality... it beganwith slaves who were able to express themselves fully as individualsthrough the act of music."46

Herein lies part of the "revolutionary" character of black music.Sidran suggests that "the development of cries was thus more thana mere stylization; it became the foundation on which a group ofpeople could join together, commit a social act, and remainindividuals throughout, and this in the face of overt oppression... thesocial act of music was at all times more than it seemed within theblack culture..." To the extent each person was involved in themusic they were involved in a process of social change. From Sidran'sviewpoint, "black music was in itself revolutionary if only becauseit maintained a non-western orientation in the realm of perceptionand communication." Beginning with work songs and spirituals,black music took on a countercultural meaning; slaves created animmense culture of resistance under the very eyes of their masters.47

The result was that "in an otherwise decimated society.. .(thesemusical forms) provided some outlet for group activity which wasnot wholly controlled by the white man's influence. The revolutionaryaspects of vocalization, which were expressed by a leader andencouraged by the responses of a chorus—the basic antiphonal (call-

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and-response) pattern of almost all Afro-American music—werecentral to these songs.. .which) constituted a social act, committeden masse by the black culture during a period when mass activitywas outlawed." Thus music became for black people not simply aleisure activity, but a way of life. "For the black culture, particularlyduring times of great cultural suppression, it was an act of physical,emotional, and social commitment. Black music was, therefore, hardlyescapist in nature, but was a direct reflection of the combinedexperiences of many individuals, all of them grounded in reality,the communal nature of black music never lost its impact.. ."48

The blues has been the wellspring of all subsequent black musicand most white popular music over the past century. Jazz in its variousforms is "a result of the combination of the circus and minstrel bandswith the blues tradition... a product of a peculiarly black voice (blues)in a peculiarly white context (Western harmony)." Sidran suggeststhat the blues tradition, first and foremost, has been an idiom ofindividual expression and social activity. It has been, and remainstoday, a music of freedom, insofar as "its structure is perfectly suitedto improvisation and spontaneous composition. It employs aminimum number of Western chords, and even these are in sucha relation to one another as to allow the imposition of almost anynote upon any chord."49

2. Ritual, Function And Affirmation In Blues And Jazz—AlbertMurray's Stomping The Blues50

Though the blues are usually thought of as a mode of musicdistinct from, though overlapping with jazz, Albert Murray effectivelyredefines blues to encompass all of blues and jazz. He does this byemphasizing the significance of both of these overlapping forms asaffirmative music, used not to express sadness, but to lay it to rest.He hears blues music (meaning blues and jazz), as closely relatedto dance and to those informally ritual celebrations, the "Saturdaynight functions," when the weight of the trials and sorrows of theweek are shucked off.

Murray sees the musicians as "professionals" rather than "folk"artists. Whether they be Delta bluesmen such as Robert Johnson ormembers of the greatest black swing bands, the musicians playeda very fundamental personal and social role and function.

In Murray's view, politics is inherent in the attitude towardexperience that generates the blues-music counterstatement in the firstplace. It is the disposition to persevere (based on a tragic, or betterstill, an epic sense of life) that blues music at its best not only embodiesbut stylizes, extends, elaborates, and refines into art. And, incidentally,

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such is the ambiguity of artistic statement that there is no need tochoose between the personal implication and the social... "51 No betterexample of such perseverance can be found than in the career ofjazz tenor man Arnett Cobb, who drags his twisted body to the stageon crutches and, when propped up on them, unleashes such a torrentof sensuous and joyously raucous sounds that the audiences shriekwith delight amid cries of "Go!" and "Work Out!"52

Murray's most significant insights into the political dimensionsof black music come from his insight into one of the little notedlegacies of generations of slavery and racism (perhaps from his beingone of the few black writers of black music): "a disposition to confrontthe most unpromising circumstances and make the most of whatlittle there is to go on, regardless of the odds—and not without findingdelight in the process or forgetting mortality at the height ofecstasy..."53

Murray suggests the music always involved ritual and rolefulfillment for the audience but with the rise of be-bop in the 1940s,jazz particularly began to serve a more self-expressive function. Murraysuggests that bop "king" Charlie Parker initiated an individualistic,self-expressive role for the jazz soloist, though Parker himself, headmits, "true to his Kansas City upbringing was, with all hisindividuality and in spite of all his personal problems, nothing ifnota sensational crowd pleaser.. . "54 Yet, in Murray's view, ". • .suchwas the primacy of role playing among some of his (Parker's) self-styled followers, that sometimes it was as if the only audience beyondthemselves that counted was other musicians.. .but thus did theybecome involved in another ritual altogether. For the ceremony theyare concerned with is not a matter of dance-beat-oriented incantationleading to celebration. They proceed as if playing music were a sacredact of self-expression "55 Either way there remains a significantelement of self-expression. As Bud Freeman said in his interview withStuds Terkel, "we can only please the audience doing what we do.We have to please ourselves first." You please yourself pleasing themwhether they are dancing or digging the 'sacred act of self-expression.'

Ritual and Epic HeroismMurray's most revelatory insights come in his interpretation of

the improvisational transformations of form among the blues/jazzgreats in terms of Kenneth Burke's approach to poetic statementsin Attitudes Toward History,56 using the concepts "frame ofacceptance" and "frame of rejection." For Murray, the concepts"represent a disposition to accept the universe with all its problemsor to protest against it."57 But he says, "what is accepted.. .is not

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the status quo nor any notion of being without potentiality nor eventhe spirit of the time; what is accepted is the all too obvious factthat human existence is almost always a matter of endeavor and hencealso a matter of heroic action." The frame of rejection representsa "negative emphasis while also pointing out that the differentiationcannot be absolute.. .at bottom what is rejected by such statementsof lamentation, protestation and exaggeration is the very existenceof the circumstances that make heroic endeavor necessary... "58 SonnyRollins, the Downbeat International Critics Poll-winning tenorsaxophonist said in an August 1984 interview with me, "You areout there putting yourself and your reputation on the line every timeyou play. I'm only as good as I am tonight. And I'm not sure thatis not a good thing.. .it's a good attitude for me, as long as I cando it."

What it all represents, in Murray's view, "is an attitude towardthe nature of human experience (and the alternatives of humanadjustment) that is most elemental and comprehensive. It is also astatement about perseverance and about resilience and thus also aboutthe maintenance of equilibrium despite precarious circumstances andabout achieving elegance in the very process of coping with therudiments of subsistence... It is thus the musical equivalent of theepic..."59

3. Social-Cultural History And Musical Style: Robert Palmer's DeepBlues60

Robert Palmer's Deep Blues is perhaps the most broadly accessibleand meticulously researched popular cultural history of any musicsince Barzun's Berlioz and His Century.61 (And would become as wellknown if it were not the story of how a world music came froma tiny impoverished black minority.) Palmer builds his story aroundbluesman Muddy Waters, who went from farm hand on Stovall'sPlantation in 1941, to leading figure in the urban electric blues sceneof Chicago in the 1950s, to cult figure on an international scale inthe "blues revival" of the '60s, stimulated by the invasion of theBritish blues-rockers on whom he had been so influential. Palmertraces the lives of several leading bluesmen of Mississippi—CharliePatton, Son House, Robert Johnson and Tommy Johnson (both,according to folk mythology, allegedly in league with the devil), andRobert "Jr." Lockwood, among others—in addition to Muddy Watersand contributes important information on a host of others. As CharlesKeil, author of one of the classic blues books of over 20 years ago,Urban Blues, put it in a perceptive discussion, Palmer is after " 'blues'

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as an isolable style, a fixed idea of blackness, a holy grail of " 'otherness'for which recordings finally provide the main source of evidence."62

More than any other work on the blues, Palmer treats the musicas the intersection of cultural history and biography, weaving a richtapestry of interlacing lines of influence and oral tradition. We learnwho was where and heard who, and listened to what records, anddeveloped in what directions. There are extended descriptions ofregional African cultural areas from which the slaves came who would"make" the blues. He presents lines of local influence in theMississippi Delta with a clarity and grace of style that are unmatchedin musical writing. Only David Evans, Big Road Blues, a morespecialized anthropological work, provides more microcosmic detailabout the transmission of the local oral tradition in the Delta region.63

Palmer hears the Delta blues as the blackest of blues—"the purestand most deeply-rooted of all blues strains." A number of urbanbluesmen and women were already practicing in northern cities whilethe Delta blues was developing. Sophisticated bluesmen like LonnieJohnson and the team of LeRoy Carr-Scrapper Blackwell were turningout records bought in large numbers by black people everywhere,even in the Delta—practically every household had a copy of Carrand Blackwell's "How Long Blues." Robert Johnson and MuddyWaters both admitted listening to it and learning from it. But theycreated their own synthesis, a powerful and elemental music withcries and falsetto moans, and instrumental accompanimentemphasizing use of the metal slide or bottleneck to achieve tonaleffects with spine-tingling impacts on listeners.

Why were the Delta bluesmen so strong in their rejection of thesmoother "urban" or "modern" influences? One explanation lies inthe strength of local oral tradition and influence that Palmer andDavid Evans describe so well. But Charles Keil provides an even moreintriguing hypothesis: "the simplest explanation may be that 'deepblues' is a black response to deep racism and represents a secondacceptance, a working through with a vengeance, of the worst racialstereotypes. Witness Muddy Waters, in performance a natural force,the churning Mississippi River itself, or a rolling stone boastingsupernatural mojo powers; Howlin Wolf, a 260-pound raging beast,the tail-dragger humping around on all fours" with vocal style ofdeep growls and eerie moans that evoke the primordial and bestial.64

Indeed Palmer says, while Muddy Waters was "superstud, the'Hoochie Coochie Man' " who would "dart around the stage, chantinga key phrase over and over, his face bathed in sweat, eyes rollingback in his head, while his band riffed one chord and the audience

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swayed as if in a trance," he would simply not go to the lengthsof Howlin Wolf—"Wolf was a feral beast."65

"I'll never forget a 1965 performance when Wolf played Memphis on a blues packageshow. This was several years before the blues revival made much headway among localwhites, and there were only three or four of us, huddled right up front in the theater'smost expensive seats...

The MC announced Wolf, and the curtains opened to reveal his band pumping outa decidedly down-home shuffle. The rest of the bands on the show were playing a jumpand soul-influenced blues, but this was the hard stuff. Where was Wolf? Suddenly hesprang out onto the stage from the wings. He was a huge hulk of a man, but he advancedacross the stage in sudden bursts of speed, his head pivoting from side to side, eyes hugeand white, eyeballs rotating wildly. He seemed to be having an epileptic seizure, but no,he suddenly lunged for the microphone, blew a chorus of raw, heavily rhythmic harmonica,and began moaning. He had the hugest voice I have ever heard—it seemed to fill thehall and get right inside your ears, and when he hummed and moaned in falsetto, everyhair on your neck crackled with electricity. The thirty minute set went by like an expresstrain, with Wolf switching from harp to guitar (which he played while rolling aroundon his back and at one point doing somersaults) and then leaping up to prowl the lipof the stage. He was The Mighty Wolf, no doubt about it. Finally, an impatient signalfrom the wings let him know that his portion of the show was over. Defiantly, Wolfcounted off a bone-crushing rocker, began singing rhythmically, feigned an exit, andsuddenly made a flying leap for the curtain at the side of the stage. Hiding the microphoneunder his beefy right arm and going higher and higher until he was perched far abovethe stage, the thick curtain threatening to rip, the audience screaming with delight. Thenhe loosened his grip and, in a single easy motion slid right back down the curtain, hitthe stage, cut off the tune, and stalked away, to the most ecstatic cheers of the evening.He was then fifty-five years old."66

For all its power, the blues, especially from the Delta, "is a refined,extremely subtle, and ingeniously systematic musical language.Playing and especially singing it right, involve some exceptionallyfine points that only a few white guitarists, virtually no white singers,and not too many black musicians who learned to play and signanywhere other than the Delta, have been able to grasp. These finepoints have to do with timing, with subtle variations in vocal timbre,and with being able to hear and execute, vocally and instrumentally,very precise gradations in pitch that are neither haphazard waveringsnor mere effects. We're talking here about techniques that are learnedand methodically applied, are meaningful in both an expressive andpurely musical sense, and are absolutely central to the art."67

The real significance Palmer hears in the Delta blues is not itsworldwide impact: that popular musicians like the Rolling Stoneslearned to play imitating it; nor for all the other stylistic and technicaldevices in popular music known all over the world. These are, Palmerpoints out, good reasons but not the best: "Its story, is an epic as

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noble and essentially American an any in our history. It's the storyof a small and deprived group of people who created, againsttremendous odds, something that has enriched us all... they werenot just...black people but...the poorest, most marginal blackpeople... (yet) they were free to live the way they wanted and to tellthe truth as they saw it."68

It is this important truth that Palmer hears in the blues, onethat can inspire anyone to create, against no matter what odds. Theincomparable energy that the poorest of the poor could manifest andinfuse into a music that has become an international languageexplains the great thirst for this version of the blues among youngwhites during the past decade or so.

4. Paul Garon's Blues And The Poetic Spirit69

Proceeding from a surrealist-psychoanalytic perspective Garonhears the blues as a form of poetic revolt against all the repressionsof society: "As a creative activity operating on a most unusual levelof mental functioning, the blues is also psychologically and poeticallysignificant." For Garon, "the blues is the musical and poeticexpression of working-class black Americans, and as such it has servedand continues to serve a specific function in a specific socialcontext.... As the poetic voice of a people distinctively victimizedby the whole gamut of the repressive forces of bourgeois/Christiancivilization (economic exploitation, political disenfranchisement,racism, etc.), the blues long ago found itself in the service of humanemancipation by virtue of the particular manner in which it dealswith such repression."70

Garon aims to move beyond the "one dimensionality" he seesin other studies of the blues (none of the works discussed above hadbeen written—with the exception of Sidran's, apparently unknownto him), "to illuminate the thread of poetry and revolt which runsthrough the blues."71 Using a radically critical psychoanalyticperspective he focuses on the dialectic between the unconscious or"primary processes" vs. the "secondary processes" or more "rational"mental functions as themselves in the blues.

While sometimes it is difficult to discern a coherent methodologybehind Garon's extravagant assertions laden with psychoanalyticconcepts and glosses to marxism, the force and occasional revelationsin his book make it quite unlike anything in musical analysis. Centralto his position is the "poetic act," embodying "the necessities ofrevolutionary fervour which, for humanity, represent indispensableingredients of the struggle for freedom. For the surrealists, this impliesa dynamic fusion between the concept of revolt and the concept of

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poetry..." Poetry, in this view, "seeks to engage the imaginationin a constant thrust towards other occluded aspects of reality... "72

In his excruciatingly revelatory chapter "Notes on the Psychologyof Enjoyment," Garon brings out the phenomenon of individualauthenticity and its appeal better than any other blues analyst. Hepoints out, "the blues distinguishes itself from numerous other songand folksong forms by its predilection for first-person presentation.The blues is indeed a self-centered music, highly personalized, whereinthe effects of everyday life are recounted in terms of the singer'sreactions. The unique personal level of this presentation... intensifiesthe appeal of the blues to its audience as a whole.. .""

Garon's way of hearing places great emphasis on the blues asa music in which repression is overcome and repressed desires maybe expressed: "We can see that part of the attractiveness of the bluesis that it is indeed a relatively unalienated form of expression." Theunconscious is of major significance here—"a blues song can bedistinguished from a non-blues by the way in which the almostindefinable manner of the performance relates to primary process(unconscious) functioning; the words become secondaryelaboration."74

Throughout, Garon presents hundreds of blues lines—perhapsmore than in any other work on the blues except Paul Oliver's earliercompendium of classic blues meanings in The Meaning of the Blues.75

Through elaborate textual and thematic analysis and exegesis heranges widely over specific themes such as work, magic, sexuality,male supremacy, women's liberation, and the police and, more generaltopics such as symbols, instincts and imagination. These have beencritically examined at greater length in essays by Carl E. Boggs andPratt.76

Garon's treatment of sexuality and the erotic in the blues is anexcellent example of his approach. Sexual themes, as any blues listenercan testify, are often the center of blues lyrics. Earlier writers suchas Samuel Charters have remarked about the open and direct sexualityin the blues. I was struck in my teens by the explicitness of JimmyRushing's blues with Count Basie and by lines by Big Joe Turnersuch as "Tell me, pretty baby, how you want your rollin' done.. ."77

Garon points out, "to those who suggest that the blues singers are'preoccupied' with sexuality, let us point out that all humanity ispreoccupied with sexuality, albeit most often in a repressive way;the blues singers, by establishing their art on a relatively non-repressivelevel, strip the "civilized" disguise from humanity's preoccupation,thus allowing the content to stand as it really is: eroticism as thesource of happiness."78

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Through examples of scores of blues lines Garon illustrates how,in his view, the blues "as it reflects human desire, projects theimaginative possibilities of true erotic existence." Thus the blues hintsat "new realities of non-repressive life, dimly grasped in our currentstate of alienation and repression."79 These insights into the powerof sexuality in the blues are unequalled in the literature. They revealGaron's central contribution: "The key to the essence of the blues"is "the dynamic interrelationship of projected gratification and actualfrustration." He points out that "it is hardly accidental that the mostrecurrent theme in the blues is the frustration of erotic desire. Thisfrustration, inextricably bound up with the whole system of classsociety, is humanity's greatest obstacle to happiness. Yet the singularmethod by which the blues comes to grips with this frustration enablesit to be simultaneously reflective and projective in a fashion whichenhances its liberating potential.. .the capacity for fantasy becomesthe crucial function in the ability to finally overthrow reality andthe displeasure that accompanies it, to unleash desire in truly non-repressive situations..." The blues becomes, then, a revolutionaryforce.80

VThe Politics Of Authenticity

The blues is clearly a music of individual authenticity. As PaulOliver pointed out in his analysis of themes in hundreds of bluesrecordings, blues is "above all the expression of the individual..."The blues serves "as a projection of the sufferings, the aspirations,the thoughts of the singer (the) song is a direct expressionof.. .immediate experience.. .the blues singer like the poet turns his(or her) eyes on the inner soul within and records... impressions andreactions to the world without.. .the blues singer speaks for himselfalone." Yet; in "the highly personal nature of the content.. .in thesharply defined images of life that the blues reflects are mirroredthe minutiae of experience of the ordinary "person." The words thatthe blues singer utters, the thoughts, passions and reactions towhich... (she/he) has given voice are those that are shared by countlessthousands. .."81

It was this quality of the blues, heard first in recordings, thatcaptured the minds of a generation and was infused in rock. CriticJon Landau has argued that "the criterion of art in rock is the capacityof the musician to create a personal, almost private, universe andto express it fully. "82 Where in the blues it was the authentic individualvoice, the voice of the performer, that was valued, this authenticitymay show up in rock in the work of what Simon Frith calls the

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"rock auteur (who may be writer, singer, instrumentalist, band, recordproducer, or even engineer) (who) creates the music; everyone elseengaged in record-making is simply part of the means ofcommunication." Indeed, Frith suggests, " . . . i t was this sense ofindividual creation that first distinguished rock from other formsof mass music—the fact that the Beatles wrote their own songs freedthem from Tin Pan Alley ideologically as well as economically, andby the 1970s it had become routine to equate art with personalconfession. Self consciousness became the measure of a record's artisticstatus..."83

The criticism of rock recordings has, Frith suggests, always"defined art in terms of subjective expression. Music, according tothe reviewing principles developed by Rolling Stone, for example,is meant to be honest: critics value a performance if they can hearit as the authentic expression of feeling," and the clearer and moreintense the feeling the better.84

This investment of subjective expression in rock came throughmusicians such as Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones—all heavilyinfluenced by the blues. It was ironic that it took the mediation ofBritish groups such as the Rolling Stones to help translate the bluesback to American white audiences. Once they succeeded, the "bluesrevival" had arrived full force. While blacks were going for soul,educated young whites, disenchanted with the lack of authenticityin popular music, started to go for "the real thing." As Muddy Waterspointed out in an interview with Robert Palmer,

"Before the Rolling Stones, people over here didn't know nothing and didn't want toknow nothing about me. I was making race records, and I'm gonna tell it to you theway the older people told it to the kids. If they'd buy my records, their parents wouldsay, 'What the hell is this? Get this nigger record out of my house!' But then the RollingStones and those other groups come over here from England, playing this music, andnow, today, the kids buy a record at some of my gigs, I might have a few kids fromthe university, but if it wasn't some school date I was playing, if it was just in a clubin Chicago, it would be maybe one percent, two percent white. I play in places nowdon't have no black faces in there but our black faces."85

Muddy, of course, neglects the important role of indigenous whitetranslators of black music. This is a process that has gone on aslong as the music. Tony Russell in Blacks, Whites, and Blues,66

demonstrates the centrality of black-white cross influences over acentury. And it operated in both directions. But well before the Stonesever existed, Elvis Presley heard the records of Roy Brown and Arthur"Big Boy" Crudup. Carl Perkins' "Matchbox" was a 12-bar bluesdating back to Blind Lemon Jefferson at least. And "Jerry Lee Lewis'

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piano style was shaped by the blues and boogie players he heardin Haney's Big House, a black night club in his native Ferriday,Louisiana... "87

To conclude, we return the question posed by Charles Keil: Whythe great thirst for the blues among young whites of this generation?Why do whites like the blues? The answer is obvious—for the samething that blacks found there. The blues says, "I am Somebody.""Here is my story. Hear it and feel it!" In the galvanization of meaningand pitch, in the fusion of music and poetry at a high emotionaltemperature, we hear the authentic expression of the joy and thesorrow of human existence; we hear "elegance in the very processof coping with the rudiments of subsistence." When we hear theblues we hear the expression of authentic human individuality.Hearing and playing the blues is a way-of-being for all of us whofeel the surplus repression of this world. As such, the blues is partof the politics of individual authenticity in which we all are involved.

Notes

1 Russell Ames, The Story of American Folk Song, (New York: Grossett andDunlap, 1955), p. 258-59; Marshall Stearns, The Story of Jazz, (New York: MentorBooks, 1958), pp. 75-81; Alan Lomax, Notes to New World Records, Roots of theBlues, NWR252, (New York, 1977).

2 Charles Keil, "True Blues", (Review of Robert Palmer, Deep Blues and SamuelCharters, The Roots of the Blues), New York Times Book Review, September 27,1981, pp. 15,22.

3 Ibid.4 Gunther, Schuller, Early Jazz, (Vol. I of The History of Jazz, (New York: Oxford

University Press, 1968), p. 36. Also see David Evans, Big Road Blues: Tradition andCreativity in the Folk Blues (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1982, pp. 15-105;Lawrence O. Koch, "Harmonic Approaches to the 12-Bar Blues Form, "Annual Reviewof Jazz Studies, I, 1982, pp. 59-72; and Paul Oliver, The Meaning of the Blues, (NewYork: Chilton Books, 1969), pp. 8-24 for discussions of the evolution of blues andblues form.

5 Paul Oliver, The Meaning...6 Albert Murray, Stomping the Blues, (New York: Vintage, 1982).7 Robert Palmer, Deep Blues, (New York: Penguin, 1982).8 Paul Garon, Blues and the Poetic Spirit, (London: Eddison Press, 1975. Reprinted

by DaCapo Press, New York, 1982).9 Ben Sidran, Black Talk, (New York: DeCapo Press, 1981).10 Oliver, p. 337. Also see Oliver's "Twixt Midnight and Day: Binarism, Blues

and Black Culture" in Richard Middleton and David Horn eds., Popular Music,2, Cambridge University Press, 1982, pp. 179-200.

11 Studs Terkel, Working, (New York: Avon Books, 1975), p. 596.12 Paul Oliver, The Meaning of the Blues, p. 327.

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13 C. Wright Mills, The Sociological Imagination, (New York: Oxford UniversityPress, 1959).

14 The best work on the scope of "the political" is Sheldon Wolin, Politics andVision, (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1960). Also especially relevant is Wolin's"Political Theory of a Vocation, American Political Science Review, (December, 1969).An important critique is Carole Pateman, "Sublimation and Reification: Locke, Wolinand the Liberal Democratic Conception of the Political, "Politics and Society, 1975.

15 This dimension of politics is considered in Hilde Hein, "AestheticConsciousness: the Ground of Political Experience, "Journal of Aesthetics and ArtCriticism, Vol. 35: No. 2, (Winter, 1976), pp. 143-152.

16 Christian Bay, The Structure of Freedom, (New York: Atheneum, 1965), p.6.

17 On protestsongs see R. Serge Denisoff, "Protest Movements: Class Consciousnessand the Propaganda Song: The Case of 'Eve of Destruction,' Public Opinion Quarterly,35 (Spring, 1971), pp. 117-122; and R. Serge Denisoff, "The Evolution of the AmericanProtest Song," in R. Serge Denisoff and Richard A. Peterson, (eds.). The Soundsof Social Change, (Chicago: Rand McNally & Co., 1972), pp. 15-25.

18 On the radical implications of black spirituals see especially Eugene Genovese,Roll, Jordan Roll: The World The Slaves Made, (New York: Pantheon, 1974), andJames H. Cone, The Spirituals and the Blues, (New York: Seabury Press, 1972).

19 Howard Becker, Outsiders, (New York: The Free Press, 1963). In Sound Effects:Youth, Leisure and the Politics of Rock 'n' Roll, (New York: Pantheon, 1981), SimonFrith notes in his discussion of rock music and mass culture that capitalist culturalforms have been seen by some as generating "creative space" in spite of the effortof the corporate music system to generate a commercial product. Thus "rock was'squeezed out' of the conflict between commercial machinations and youthfulaspirations. If the industry was seeking to exploit a new market, the youthful audiencewas seeking a medium through which to express its experience, and musicians, whowere at the center of this conflict, were able to develop their own creative space"(p. 47). Also see Hein, "Aesthetic Consciousness...," pp. 147.

20 On the uses of free space Loren S. Weinberg has noted, "Free spaces are oneswhich give scope for latent forces of personality to emerge and in which a personfinds other people with whom to discuss ideas. Different social spaces can be freeones to different people." Loren S. Weinberg, The Political Socialization ofCommunity Activists, Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Political Science, Universityof Colorado, 1982, p. 428.

21 While the works of Erik H. Erikson explore the concept of identity exhaustively,its links to artistic creativity were earlier discussed by Otto Rank. For an insightfulintroduction see Esther Menaker, Otto Rank: A Rediscovered Legacy, (New York:Columbia Univ. Press, 1982), especially pp. 29-37. Rank's insights are central to ErnestBecker, The Denial of Death, (New York: The Free Press 1973).

22 Albert Murray, Stomping the Blues, (New York: Vintage Books, 1982), p. 126.23 John Berger, Ways of Seeing, (New York: Penguin Books, 1977), first published

in London by the BBC and Penguin Books, 1972.24 Irving Louis Horowitz, "Authenticity and Originality in Jazz: Toward A

Paradigm in the Sociology of Music," Journal of Jazz Studies, Vol. 1, No. 1 (October1973), p. 57-64. This is one of the most perceptive works I have encountered in previousliterature and significant in the formation of my own ideas.

25 Max Rafael, The Demands of Art, (Princeton University Press, 1968), p. 195.

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26 Charles Keil, Urban Blues, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966), p.vii.

27 Rafael, The Demands of Art.28 Sandra Lieb, Mother of the Blues: A Study of May Rainey, (Amherst: University

of Massachusetts Press, 1981), p. 3.29 John Coltrane, quoted by Sidran, p. 14.30 Murray, p. 252.31 Ibid, pp. 251-252, emphasis added.32 Peter Fuller, Seeing Berger: A Reevaluation, (London: Writers and Readers,

1981).33 Ibid., p. 13.34 Ibid., p. 22.35 Among the artists I have interviewed in this period are Eddie "Cleanhead"

Vinson, Johnny Shines, Robert Jr. Lockwood, Charlie Musslewhite, Arnett Cobb,John Hammond, Jr., Dave Van Ronk, Mose Allison, Lonnie Brooks, Fenton Robinson,KoKo Taylor, Eddie Shaw, Red Holloway, Valerie Wellington and Sonny Rollins.

36 KoKo Taylor in Robert Neff and Anthony Conner, Blues, (Boston: David Godine,1975), p. 122. Her statement is consistent with my conversation with her in May,1983.

37 On the concept of authenticity see Marshall Berman, The Politics of Authenticity,(New York: Atheneum, 1970), and Lionel Trilling, Sincerity and Authenticity,(Harvard, 1972); the concept is a key one in Martin Heidegger's Being and Time,translated from the German by John Macquarie and EdwaTd Robinson (London:SCM Press, 1962). Heidegger's approach to art is relevant to our discussion—see his"The Origin of the Work of Art" in Albert Hofstader and Richard Kuhns, (eds.),Philosophies of Art and Beauty (New York: Modern Library, 1964). Authenticityand the aesthetics of existential phenomenology are discussed lucidly in Monroe C.Beardsley, Aesthetics From Classical Greece to the Present, (University, Alabama:University of Alabama Press, 1975), pp. 363-376; authenticity is a key word as wellin Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, translated from the French by HazelBarnes, (New York: Philosophical Library, 1956). See Herbert Marcuse's critique,"Sartre's Existentialism, Studies in Critical Philosophy, (Boston: Beacon Press, 1973).

38 Trilling, Sincerity and Authenticity, pp. 99-100.39 Berman, The Politics of Authenticity, p. ix.40 Ben Sidran, Black Talk, (New York: DaCapo Press, 1981).41 The workings of the oral tradition in the Mississippi Delta region are dealt

with in exquisite detail in David Evans, Big Road Blues, (Berkeley: University ofCalifornia Press, 1982).

42 Sidran, pp. 2-3.43 Ibid. pp. 3-6.44 Ernest Borneman, "The Roots of Jazz," in Nat Hentoff and Albert J. McCarthy,

(eds.), Jazz, (New York: DaCapo Press, 1978, originally published 1959), p. 17.45 Sidran, pp. 8; 11.46 Ibid., pp. 13-14.47 Ibid., pp. 14-16. Also see Alan Lomax's illuminating discussion in his notes

to the New World Records collection, Roots of the Blues, (NWR 252).48 Sidran, pp. 16-17.49 Ibid., p. 34.50 Albert Murrary, Stomping the Blues, (New York: Vintage Books, 1982).

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51 Ibid.52 On Arnett Cobb see Larry Birnbaum, "Arnett Cobb—Soul—Wrenching Sax,"

Downbeat, April, 1981, p. 24-27. Even more awe-inspiring is the career of ColemanHawkins who was the unchallenged master of tenor sax for two decades and amongthe greatest players for 40 years. On his career see Collier, The Making of Jazz, pp.221-229. At the very end, unable to walk, he put on his coat and dragged himselfand his horn across the floor of his apartment to meet a colleague who was comingto take him to what would have been his very last gig. See John McDonough, ColemanHawkins, Time-Life Giants of Jazz Series, p. 28.

53 Murray, pp. 69-70.54 Ibid., p. 250.55 Ibid.56 Kenneth Burke, Attitudes Toward History, 2 Vols., (New York: The New

Republic, 1937). An illuminating study of Burke's approaches to popular cultureis C. Ronald Kimberling, Kenneth Burke's Dramatism and Popular Arts, (BowlingGreen, Ohio: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1982).

57 Murray, p. 251.58 Ibid., p. 251.59 Murray, p. 251.60 Robert Palmer, Deep Blues, (New York: Penguin Books, 1982).61 Jacques Barzun, Berlioz and His Century: An Introduction to the Age of

Romanticism, (New York: Meridian Books, 1956).62 Charles Keil, New York Times Book Review, September 27, 1981, p. 15.63 Evans, op. cit.64 Charles Keil, New York Times Book Review, p. 15, 22.65 Palmer, p. 232.66 Ibid., pp. 232-233.67 Palmer, p. 19, emphasis added.68 Ibid, p. 17.69 Paul Garon, Blues and the Poetic Spirit, (London: Eddison Press, 1975).

Reprinted by Da Capo Press, New York.70 Garon, pp. 15-16.71 Ibid., p. 18.72 Ibid., 20-21.73 Ibid., p. 33.74 Ibid., p. 35.75 Paul Oliver, The Meaning of the Blues, (New York: Collier Books, 1963).

Originally published in London, 1960 as The Blues Fell This Morning.76 Carl E. Boggs, Review of Garon, "The Blues Tradition: From Poetic Revolt

to Political Impasse, "Socialist Review, 38, 1978. Carl E. Boggs and Ray Pratt, "TheBlues Tradition: Poetic Revolt or Cultural Impasse?" forthcoming in Donald Lazare,ed., Culture as Social Control (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986).

77 Jimmy Rushing with Count Basie, "Jimmy's Blues" on Columbia LP CountBasie Classics, (CL 754, o.p.) presently partially available on Pausa label as Basie'sBest. Big Joe Turner with Pete Johnson and His Orchestra, "Tell Me Pretty Baby"on Arhoolie R2004 Jumpin the Blues. Charters' comments appear in the prefaceto the 1975 edition of The Country Blues (New York: Da Capo Press, 1975), pix:"white culture had developed this same kind of defensive hypocrisy toward so many

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elements in its life, from sexuality to personal mores. In the black expression I founddirectness, an openness and an immediacy I didn't find in the white."

78 Garon, p. 66.79 Ibid.80 Ibid. p. 76.81 Paul Oliver, The Meaning of the Blues, pp. 322-327.82 Jon Landau, cited by Simon Frith, Sound Effects: Youth Leisure and the Politics

of Rock in' Roll, (New York: Pantheon, 1981), p. 53.83 Frith, p. 53.84 Ibid., p. 161.85 Palmer, Deep Blues, p. 260.86 Tony Russell, Blacks, Whites and Blues, (London: Edison Blues Books, 1970).87 Robert Palmer, "Rock Begins", in Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock

& Roll, p. 12.

Ray Pratt is associate professor of Political Science at Montana State University, Bozeman,MT.

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the politics of authenticity in popular music. the case of the blues - ray pratt

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